Re: Portland, Oregon

Transit is good within the city. I don't go out of city proper very often, so I don't know much about that, but I don't drive at all (and I get from place to place just fine) and it's relatively common here not to own a car. I'd imagine one for a family of three would be fine, especially if you're looking for work somewhere in town and not at some office building in the sticks.

Re: Portland, Oregon

You can stop just about anyone and ask the time or for some directions, but don't try to actually be their friend.

This is a complaint? In what kind of weirdo fucking commune would you stop someone on the street with the intention of becoming their friend for life and not be considered a nutwank? Screws loose, this guy.

This comment underneath is my favorite part:

PORTLAND, OREGON DOES SUCK #?*!& !*&%*!!!! The two previous comments from "He's gone" and "zeebo" are probobly from meth-head, video poker playin, thrift-close wearin, tree-huggin loser freaks. People in Portland are all about their personal agendas, while acting like they are here to save the world! Last time I checked, Oregon was still a part of the USA, where we are free to come and go as we please. Oregonians need to quit acting like they are 'godesses' gift to the universe, start 'combining' their foods like normal people, do something real about the unemployment rate (yeah, that's something to be proud of)and get over themselves!!! Maybe all the pot-smoking hippies that spawned illegitimate free-love kids were wrong? Check out Portland and find out!

Re: Portland, Oregon

My husband got a too good to be true offer for a job. We are seriously considering a move from Orange County to Portland. What advice, information, pictures, or warnings can you give us?

- Portland has quite possibly the most annoying mayor I've ever seen or heard of. Blatant, two faced liar to boot.
- The police like to shoot minorities and those with mental health issues.
- Great beer.
- Weather might be hard on those from sunnier climes.
- Locals can not drive.
- Fantastic locale for those that love the outdoors; the Coast is beautiful and ~1hr away. So are the Mountains, again ~1hr away.
- Cost of housing (to buy) is ok, outside of the city itself.
- Local music scene is, as noted, great.
- OR is one of the hardest hit states budget wise so expect a lot of cuts to services and/or tax hikes in the next few years.
- You can't pump your own gas here, by law. Toothless yokels are employed to do it for you.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

I think I have read about some problems using Forest Park for mtn biking.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

I read the rant above. lol. So many people moaning about the weather. It's not like that's an unknown.

<-- has pumped several hundred gallons of rainwater out of his backyard today.

Last edited by MarkO; 01-16-2011 at 09:46 PM.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

I really dont know about mtn biking trails to be able to comment. The areas mentioned in the rant (Browns camp, Hagg Lake) are well out of the city and the only time I've gone to Browns camp is to shoot guns.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

From the comments ...

lol.

Battlestar Traffica says: What the fuck? I've been living here for almost a year and am stunned by the way people drive here. Why do you drive so fucking slow? Why is the right lane going 45 on 26 and the left lane barely going 55? Why the fuck, on 217, near the Dennis exit, do all you assholes get scared of the merging and hop into the left lane, causing traffic to back way the fuck up to walker. WHY, when it rains, do you FUCKING drive like you've never driven in rain before? It rains all the damn time here and you act like it's a NEW driving condition!! Pisses me off. Why the fuck? It wasn't raining that bad today, yet everyone is breaking and driving slower than a fucking scooter. And don't get me started when it snows. Fuckers actually stopping their cars and getting out to stare at the sky. It's SNOW. And not even a lot of it!! It's easy to drive in! But no, you assholes continue to slam on your breaks in the worst possible driving conditions. Real bright, slamming on your breaks 10 times in 30 seconds when there "could" be ice on the fucking ground. That's how people die - so learn to drive fuckheads! And then the hills. Why, going to downtown on 26, do you assholes break like you are going down at some HUGE slope. You fuckheads do this on 217 too. I can take that entire hill at 80MPH in my shitty little car without hitting the break once. You don't need to fucking break all the time. Because when YOU fucking break, the car behind you (even if he's 60 feet away) feels the need to break. You people are one of the shittiest fucking drivers I've had to share the road with. And you are so proud of your mass transit system. It's shit. Tri-Met really fucking blows. It's hardly great compared to other great cities with decent working mass-transit. So fuck you Tri-Met too.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

The only place I've ever been where people drive worse than Seattle is Portland. But it's pretty easy to get used depending on how hostile of a driver you are. I love driving in the bay area now that I've moved down though...

Re: Portland, Oregon

Locals here have been very kind and welcoming to me since I moved here in '04. There again, I've found people everywhere in America to be gracious and willing to help you out.

Originally Posted by Cpt. Funkaho

Man, the Beatles were overrated like gravity is overrated. ......... Say what you want, but statements like "the Beatles were overrated" make me much less likely to listen to anything you say afterward.

Re: Portland, Oregon

And a Sloe Gin Fizz
If that ain't love, then tell me what is.

"All of you coachella 'regulars' have nasty boy pussies and itchy dick4's on your asses.
Why don't you all make like a tree and get chopped down and die. You all have been dreadfully mean to me.
I Hate you. All of you. None of you will ever get to see a womans chest meat or finger blast hott cougies like me.
Fuck you all. Consider this my resignation.
Fair the well, you elitest scumbags."— Faxman75, who has clearly had enough

Re: Portland, Oregon

Originally Posted by algunz

Theijuiel, was the transition from sunny to rainy as difficult as everyone says? At present, this is my biggest concern.

Well I was born here and continued to stay here until the age of 13-14 so I'm used to the rain. I'm not influenced much by the weather so the transition wasn't hard for me at all. So far there has only been two bouts of cold where the needle drops below freezing but it tends to warm up when the rain falls *It's about 55 during the day now*. Just aware there is a lot of rain as said in the previous posts but if that doesn't faze you, grab that u-haul and go.

Almost every person I've conversed with has welcomed me back to Portland so I have nothing but positive experiences to help persuade you. I may be a little biased because I'm coming from a small valley to a large metro area and this move has greatly elevated my depressing mood from living in the Coachella Valley.

"Give me women, wine and snuff
Until I cry out 'hold, enough!"John Keats

Re: Portland, Oregon

Portland rocks! I've lived in a suburb about 10 miles outside of it my entire life and don't think i'd want to live anywhere else. A good city, eco friendly, nice people, great music scene.. but not too big and chaotic! the whether is something you have to accept if you're moving anywhere in the northwest and hey we have perfect summers :] great public transportation, sustainability, etc. i would describe it as pretty indie/hippe -esq? very liberal! and eugene is only about 2 hours away.. GO DUCKS!

Re: Portland, Oregon

Where in America can "young people go to retire"? During the opening scene of a new comedy that premiered earlier this month on IFC, Fred Armisen of "Saturday Night Live" tells former Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein about this strange and wonderful place where "the dream of the '90s is alive," where people are still "talking about getting piercings and tribal tattoos" and "all the hot girls wear glasses," where going to clown college or taking a part-time job that lets you sleep till 11 a.m. is a totally valid career move.

No, it's not Austin, Texas. Or San Francisco. Or Boulder, Colo. It's Portland, Ore. But when Armisen and Brownstein wrote this sketch for "Portlandia" — a six-part series that affectionately skewers the city, along with its feminist bookstores and community gardens — they knew it might hit close to home, no matter which tribal-tattooed hipsteropolis you live in. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Portland and now live in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Portland of the East.)

"Now more than ever, people have embraced this lifestyle that's progressive and green and earnest, and Portland is really the apex of that lifestyle," says Brownstein, who's lived in Portland for about a decade, and first started spoofing her adopted city with Armisen in the sketch comedy group Thunderant. "But it's also reached a tipping point where people are starting to question that lifestyle because they're aware that there's something a little bit ridiculous or precious about it."

Before you argue with that, consider that Portland is the home of the self-proclaimed "world's first vegan strip club" and "world's largest naked bike ride." Suddenly, "Portlandia" — which features sketches about adult hide-and-seek leagues and a local artisanal light bulb craze — doesn't seem so absurd.

Decades ago, some people might have insisted that Los Angeles was the place where young people went to retire. But that started to change around the mid-1980s, when Oregon reformed its corporate income tax laws and multinational companies expanded into the area, luring young Californians with new jobs. Now the Portland area is a major hub for companies such as Intel and Adidas, and home base for Nike and Wieden + Kennedy — the ad firm behind Nike's "Just Do It" campaign, whose offices famously resemble an adult playground, complete with a basketball court and a giant bird's nest.

Brownstein briefly worked at Wieden + Kennedy, and a "Portlandia" sketch about nonconformist brainstorming was filmed there. "It's called moodshowering," one character explains. "We hit you with a ball and you tell us the first thing that comes to mind about sportswear."

For Portland Mayor Sam Adams, the local job market helps explain why the city has become a magnet for forward-thinking 18- to 34-year-olds. "We're known for high-tech, digital media and outdoor apparel, and those industries require highly educated folks or folks who skew younger," says Adams, who makes a cameo in "Portlandia" as the assistant to the mayor. (Yes, in Portland, even the mayor's ironic.)

But Adams points out that the city's progressive attitude can be traced way back to "the Fort Hall phenomenon," named for the Idaho outpost where the Oregon Trail diverged from the California Trail. "Settlers who came to Oregon had to decide that they weren't gonna try to strike it rich in California," he says, "so there was a real self-separation going all the way back."

Much of "Portlandia" pokes fun at Portland's pioneer-days spirit, which has evolved into a do-it-yourself movement that's embraced pursuits including organic farming and needlepoint. One sketch is called "Put a Bird on It," based on the premise that in Portland, you can put a bird on anything and call it art.

Sue Bradbury, who owns the Portland boutique Ellaina, heard about that sketch on the online vintage and handmade goods site Etsy, where bird throw pillows and bird tote bags abound. "When I moved to Portland from California, the first thing I did was put a bird appliqué on everything I made," she says. "When I saw 'Portlandia,' I thought, 'Oh crap. That's over.'"

No matter how ridiculous "Portlandia" gets, Armisen says, the truth is always stranger. "There was one scene where we play Dumpster divers, and we weren't sure if that was really a real thing or not," he recalls. "Then we shot another scene, and one of the extras on the show was telling us, unprompted, that she was a Dumpster diver."

"She was telling us that she built her own Wi-Fi system out of trash," adds Brownstein. "Each person we worked with embodied Portland in their own way. Our props guy lives in a trailer that's painted like a sweat sock inside. Our set medic is also a fire juggler."

Of course, not everyone finds the city's oddballs so charming. When the website Deadline Hollywood first posted about "Portlandia," it inspired such ultraserious rants that it could've been a "Portlandia" sketch in itself. One commenter cursed Portland, "the land of unrelentingly hip," where if you're not some skinny kid "riding your bike in the rain with a tattoo of a kitchen knife on your forearm to your life's work at your stupid little organic-vegan bakery then you just can't fit in."

Then again, nothing inspires local pride quite like insults about your hometown. "Dude, your vibe is so heinous, I live here and it rocks," another commenter responded. "Of course I get tired of everything being renamed after Cesar Chavez, but hey man, the coffee's good the brews are cold — love and peace man."

Whether that last guy is joking or not, it's hard to say. But no one likes to poke fun at Portland more than the people who live there. When "Portlandia" had its Portland premiere, even the mayor was laughing. "I declared that this day was Portlandia Day," Adams recalls. "And my official declaration had a bird on it."

Last edited by PlayaDelWes; 01-31-2011 at 01:57 PM.

Originally Posted by dj12inches

What makes me qualified? I've watched EVERY fucking episode of American Idol, and every single episode of The Voice...Forget that I won departmental music awards when I was in the 8th grade choir.

Re: Portland, Oregon

Re: Portland, Oregon

We're looking into moving out of Phoenix in the next couple of years, and Portland made our short list. Thought about San Fran for awhile but it's just not for us. We'll be heading up this summer to investigate 'hoods. Any suggestions? Only requirements are close to public transportation and not scary.

Originally Posted by RandyInHeaven

Devin - how does it feel to know that there are still more women in the world that would fuck me at this very moment than would fuck you?